Contents

The scriptures tell how the First Council held shortly after the Buddha's death collected together the discipline (vinaya), and the dhamma in five collections. Tradition holds that little was added to the Canon after this. Scholars are more sceptical, but differ in their degrees of scepticism. Dr Richard Gombrich, Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, former Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University and former President of the Pali Text Society, thinks most of the first four nikayas (see below) go back to the Buddha, in content but not in form.[1] The late Professor Hirakawa Akira says[2] that the First Council collected only short prose passages or verses expressing important doctrines, and that these were expanded into full length suttas over the next century. L. S. Cousins, former lecturer in the Department of Comparative Religion at Manchester University and former President of the Pali Text Society, holds[3] that in early times sutta was a pattern of teaching rather than a body of literature. Dr Gregory Schopen, Lecturer in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, says[4] that it is not until the fifth to sixth centuries C.E. that we can know anything definite about the contents of the Pali Canon.

The first four nikayas and more than half of the fifth have been translated by the Pali Text Society[1]. The first three have also been translated in the Teachings of the Buddha series by Wisdom Publications, with a translation of the fourth in preparation.